You for Christmas by Madeline Ash

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Title: You for Christmas
Author: Madeline Ash
Series: Rags to Riches #3
Published by: Tule Publishing
Release Date: October 28, 2015
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 224
Genres: Contemporary, Holiday, Romance
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks
My rating:

Blurb:

Regan Case wouldn’t know the right side of the tracks if they ran her out of town. She’s lived hard since she ran away at sixteen, but eight years later, an accident has terrified her into pulling her life together. And that means finally going home for Christmas.

Taking her return one step at a time, she ends up on the doorstep of her sister’s best friend, Felix Nickson. The man indebted to her after she jammed ten grand down in trousers in high school and enabled him to escape his own demons. Felix agrees to let her stay, but doesn’t count on the chemistry that burns hot between them.

As they get into the Christmas spirit, he watches Regan’s shadows fade away and discovers that beneath her careless attitude, she is by far the bravest woman he’s ever met. He falls for her, fast and hard, but she fears she doesn’t deserve such a good man. A black sheep cannot change her colors.

Can Felix forgive her past or would asking for his love be one too many miracles this Christmas?

My Review:

4.5 stars — OK, this one turned out to be a total Christmas gem!!  I had no expectations going into it, had never even heard of this author — just saw it on BookBub or something like that.  And it’s turned into one of my fave holiday reads this year!

This isn’t just some fluffy romance read either.  There are some dark issues that are dealt with, though you don’t find out exactly what happened until near the end of the book.  I thought Regan was written beautifully…you could really tell that she was struggling with something horrible in her past that had shaped her into the woman she became…and she was a very broken and troubled young woman.  Sometimes her rough edges were hard to handle, especially b/c you end up falling in total love with Felix (we’ll get to him), but in the end, from my completely inexperienced perspective, I thought she was portrayed and behaved exactly as someone with those past demons would.

Now onto the shining star of this book — FELIX!!!  I fell in love with him right from the prologue, with his shyness and inexperience.  He was just everything.  Patient, kind, though not without a rough edge or two in the beginning.  I just wanted to steal him away from Regan and hug him to death.  Maybe it’s b/c I have my own geek to love, but he was just everything I love in a book boy.

And their bantering back and forth was a HIGHLIGHT for me!  I absolutely love snarky wit and sassy comebacks, and the way they played off each other was delicious.  Heck, even at the end there was great interaction with all the secondary characters — which of course makes me want to read some of their stories, so wishlisted.

So basically, we have a holiday winner.  I even loved that it was set in Australia and you got to see how Christmas would be in their hot summer.  On a side note, as a Canadian, it was a little disheartening that it was all about ice and snow…;)